Is Your PMO Disrupted...or Disruptor?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Artificial Intelligence   PMO  

PMOs sometimes get a bad rap. Sometimes, they deserve it. But increasingly, PMOs are becoming essential tools in the creation, evolution and support of the kind of project delivery environment that organizations need to thrive in a world where projects are ever more important—and stable operations are set to become a thing of the past.

The problem is, not everyone believes that PMOs have an important role to play. A significant number of stakeholders in many organizations still view PMOs as reporting and oversight functions that have little relevance for today’s world. PMOs need to change that perception, and I think digital disruption is a good way to start doing that.

When I say that, I don’t mean that the PMO can help project teams deal with technological changes, or minimize the disruption that they cause. I mean that PMOs should be drivers of technology-driven disruption—changing up how projects get done by leveraging technology in new and innovative ways. This makes the PMO proactive—positioning it as the disruptor, rather than as the body that is disrupted (or as a “disruption prevention” mechanism).

I believe that this approach has a number of key benefits for PMOs:

• It shows them as being forward-looking functions, focused on finding ways to optimize performance and not afraid of embracing new and emerging trends.…

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